Zephyr

HCI Independent Study

How might we empower teachers with data?

Working with local elementary schools, our team designed
and developed an iPad app to help teachers track and analyze
the behavior of their special education students.

The Problem

A paper driven workflow made it difficult for
teachers to collect and analyze data.

Data Collection Issues

Paper records and a distracting enviornment made it difficult
for teachers to collect student data.

Manual Paper Records

Most data was collected manually on paper and stored away in
cumbersome mobile cabinets.

Distracting Classroom Enviornment

Teaching staff were working in a busy enviornment, and weren't
always able to record data immediately. Any time spent
recording data was time not spent working with a child.

Tools designed for one student

Existing electronic tools weren't well suited for classroom
enviornments. Most were designed to work for a single
individual.

Analysis Challenges

Hand-plotted graphs made it difficult to explore data, yet
easy to misinterpret.

Inconsistent Collection Methods

Different staff members working in different classrooms often
used different ways to record data, making meaningful
comparisons between student data difficult.

Parents often misinterpreted data

Parents oftentimes misunderstood data that was being sent
home, to the point that one school intentionally stopped
sending home daily data sheets.

Cumbersome Hand-Plotted Graphs

Analysis of multiple hand-plotted graphs really only occurred
at monthly reviews, and even then could only be interpreted
from a single, static perspective.

The Prototype

We designed and built an iPad app that
serves as a better alternative to paper forms.

Multitouch Visualizations

I prototyped a more natural way to explore progress over time.

Staff periodically meet to discuss student data, and want to
measure student progress across time. While typically they
conducted a 20-day review, it was also important to be able to
see progress across an entire year, and even drill down into a
particular week.

I worked on making use of multitouch gestures to explore
graphs over time, allowing zooming in/out and scrolling to
move around graph, instead of introducing a separate control
for adjusting time.

Automated Analysis

I wrote a tool that automatically
notified teachers of trends in their data.

Instead of limiting staff to combing through data only during
monthly reviews, we wanted to expose staff to data on an
ongoing basis.

I developed an automated Python script that discovers and
notifies staff of interesting features in student data,
ranging from decline in performance to correlation between
multiple students and factors (such as the day of week).

Challenges

Distracting Teachers

We had to be careful to not interrupt/distract staff with
superfluous notifications.

Automation as a crutch

Automated systems can't notice everything. Instead of relying
purely on automation, we wanted to encourage staff to
regularly dive deeper into the data.

Misleading Absolutes

Correlation does not imply causation. Instead of showing staff
absolute trends, we tried to suggest where staff
should look first, and encourage them to explore and make
decisions on their own.